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Company Performance

In 2012, Ceres and Sustainalytics released The Road to 2020: Corporate Progress on The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability, which assesses how U.S. businesses are progressing on sustainability using The 21st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability as a framework. Specifically, it evaluates where 600 large publicly traded companies1 stand on sustainability issues in terms of governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance (which includes operations, supply chain, transportation & logistics, products & services, and employees). This section includes our key findings as well as customizable performance graphs.

THE ROAD TO 2020

In 2012, Ceres and Sustainalytics released The Road to 2020: Corporate Progress on The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability, which assesses how U.S. businesses are progressing on sustainability using The 21st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability as a framework. Specifically, it evaluates where 600 large publicly traded companies1 stand on sustainability issues in terms of governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance (which includes operations, supply chain, transportation & logistics, products & services, and employees). This section includes our key findings as well as customizable performance graphs.

REPORT OVERVIEW AND METHODOLOGY

This report evaluates if and how 600 large U.S. companies are meeting many of the expectations outlined in the Ceres Roadmap. It is intended to allow companies to assess how they are performing against their peers and to see what businesses are doing across economic sectors. It is not an absolute measure of performance but a relative one. Simply because a company is performing better than its peers with regard to a specific Roadmap expectation does not mean it has fully met that expectation.

Sustainalytics’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) research and analysis platform was leveraged as the basis for The Road to 2020 assessment process. Indicators from the ESG platform were selected as proxies to measure the expectations from the Ceres Roadmap, and Sustainalytics also customized the database to include additional indicators that would strengthen the assessment. Industry-specific weightings were assigned to address unique areas of impact and exposure.

While the expectations covered in the first three chapters — which are focused on accountability measures for sustainability — are equally applied to each of the 600 companies evaluated, in the Performance chapters a more nuanced approach was taken. We recognize that different sectors have different types of environmental and social impacts and exposure, and that leadership in sustainability performance will not necessarily require the same types of action across sectors. For this reason, the analysis in these chapters is more customized than in the previous three, and is noted throughout. Read more about the report methodology and what we measured here.

OUR CONCLUSION?

Companies are moving, albeit too slowly, given the urgency of the sustainability challenges we face.

Two years into the 2020 timeframe, we still have a long way to go. For example, just 26 percent of the 600 companies are integrating sustainability within governance and management systems; only a quarter are disclosing supply chain monitoring and performance; and a third are setting targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While some companies have made great strides; others are standing still; and most are somewhere in between. This means that for most companies the opportunities to transform themselves are vast.

To view customized performance data for each of the expectations and read more key findings from the 2012 progress report, click on the sections to the left.